


Overwatch drabbles

by Bullfinch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, Holidays, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 10:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9067162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bullfinch/pseuds/Bullfinch
Summary: Collection of OW drabbles cross-posted from my tumblr. Check chapter titles for content.





	1. Gabriel Reyes + OW crew, holiday fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holiday-themed Overwatch drabble featuring gift-giving and snowball fights. Goes in the continuity of the [Sublimation series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/575626).

_“You’re_ leaving?”

_Gabriel winces. “Just for a month or so. I’ll be back by the end of January.”_

_“But you’ll miss Christmas!” Fareeha clasps the football in her hands, her and Jack’s game of catch suspended for the moment._

_“I know, I know. I guess they really wanted to get this thing off the ground.”_

_Jack comes over, his boots crunching in the snow. “Still, it’s a dick move. They can’t wait one week?”_

_He grimaces. “I tried to talk to them down. Didn’t get very far.”_

_“Wait—“ Fareeha hesitates, looks over her shoulder at the base, then back to Gabriel. “Hang on just a minute! Stay here!”_

_Then she drops the football and starts sprinting towards the door. Her legs are getting gangly—Gabriel expects she’ll be a foot taller by the time he gets back. Jack sighs, his breath misting out in front of him. “You sure you want to go through with this? It’s not too late to turn them down.”_

_Gabriel runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I’m sure. They say it’ll make me a better soldier.”_

_“Man, it just doesn’t sound_ safe _. Nanite…what did they call it? ‘Integration?’”_

_Gabriel chuckles dryly. “Something like that. And no, it doesn’t. But they tell me it’s been tested plenty.”_

_“Fine.” But the corner of Jack’s mouth is pulled down. Not happy about it. “Long as you get back here in one piece.”_

_“I will.”_

_“If you don’t, I’m gonna be pissed.”_

_“I will, Jack.”_

_“Doesn’t even make any sense. I thought they wanted to do the strike commander announcement before the end of the year.”_

_Gabriel shrugs. “They haven’t mentioned it to me yet.”_

_“Hm. Guess they’re waiting, then.” Jack tugs his hat down over his ears. “Jesus, when was the last time we didn’t spend Christmas together?”_

_Gabriel tries to remember. “Was it—no, wait.”_

_Jack nods knowingly. “ ’47? We almost didn’t, but you dragged my sorry ass out of that rubble just before midnight.”_

_“Fuck. You almost died.”_

_He laughs. “I still can’t believe you made it past the Omnics. I sure as hell didn’t.”_

_“God damn. I don’t know either.” He grins. “Luck, I guess.”_

_“Yeah, except you always do shit like that. That’s why you’re getting promoted.”_

_“It’s okay, Jack.” Gabriel claps him on the shoulder. “I’ll still hang out with you even when I’m earning twice your pay.”_

_Jack snorts. “Thanks a lot.”_

_The door bursts open and Fareeha sprints out with one hand tucked inside her coat. She’s breathing hard and skids to a stop in the snow. “I have your present—since you won’t be here on Christmas.”_

_“Oh. Thanks, Fareeha. Your mom’ll have to give you yours, I had it sent here but…well.” He won’t be here._

_Fareeha stares at the ground, biting her lip. “I—I messed it up. I was going to make another one but I don’t have time so I hope it’s okay.” She pulls her hand out from her jacket._

_It’s a hat, knitted in black yarn—a beanie, he finds, taking it from her. The top is indeed shaped a little oddly, but he puts it on and it fits just fine. “You made this yourself? It’s awesome.”_

_She seems reassured by his broad grin. “You never wear a hat even when it’s freezing. So now you have to.”_

_It’s warm and not too tight and covers his ears. “Thanks, Fareeha. This is great.” He bends down to hug her._

_She hugs him back. “I’m going to miss you.”_

_——_

The snowball thuds into the back of Gabriel's head, the cold, wet fragments collecting in his collar. 

He spins around. McCree is there sitting in the snow, reaching out to touch his toes before he joins Fareeha for laps around the training field. “Think you’re funny, huh?” Gabriel growls, leaning down.

Jesse looks up. “Come a— _agh!”_ He lifts his arms just in time to shield himself from the snowball, but Gabriel times the second one right and it hits Jesse in the face as soon as he drops his arms. He splutters, “What in the hell was that for?!”

“You trying to tell me you didn’t throw that? There’s no one else here.” Gabriel’s already digging in the snow again.

“I didn’t throw shit! I don’t know— _fuck—“_ He tries to scramble away. The next snowball hits him in the ass. Gabriel chuckles to himself, then ducks the missile flying at his head. 

They circle, scooping up snow and sniping at each other. Jesse adjusts quickly and in seconds his throws are as dead-on as his revolver shots; the best Gabriel can do is block and return fire. He could lean on the nanomachines for trajectory prediction and accuracy—but that would be cheating. Then a snowball smacks into his upper back and he whips around.

Fareeha is already throwing her second, and he bats it down. “Why are you on _his_ side?!” 

“Because you’ve got nanites and all he has is a hangover!” She’s forming up her next missile, and Gabriel takes a shot in the side of the head from Jesse for his negligence. The snow is powdery, so it doesn’t hurt. But it is very cold. 

Gabriel grins. “So that’s the way you want to play it? Fine.”

The nanites rise to his aid. 

His accuracy improves dramatically, as does his defense; one glimpse of a snowball is enough to predict where he needs to be to avoid it, and the machines analyze changes in position, pick up minute shifts of weight or rotations of winter boots to tell him where he should be throwing. Fareeha takes a perfect shot to the gut, and Jesse gets pegged in the face again, which Gabriel is quite proud of.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the hell’s going on here?”

That’s Jack, emerging from the base with a thermos in hand. The machines register _mismatch—_ his words may be of surprise but his face and body language show no such thing. Gabriel’s eyes narrow, and he spools back his video recall—still recent enough so the first shot in the melee plays in perfect details, the _thud_ to the back of his head, spinning to see McCree sitting there—

—and the door to the base not quite closed. Certainly not how he left it. “It was _you.”_

“What was me?” Jack asks innocently.

“You threw that snowball.” Gabriel leans down, gathering up some snow. 

“What? Me, throwing snowballs? I’m too old for that crap.” Jack waves a dismissive hand. 

But Gabriel’s already throwing, so he has to duck, and when he comes back up he’s grinning. “Hey! That was _uncalled for.”_

“Bullshit. You started all this, you better believe you’re finishing it.” Gabriel leans down again—

—and gets smacked in the ass by a snowball. Fareeha’s in front of him, which means it was Jesse, and he whirls. “What the fuck?!” He jabs a finger at Jack. “He framed you! Why are you throwing at _me?”_

“You got me in the face! Twice!” Jesse says indignantly and throws again, and Gabriel dodges, takes a hit to the shoulder from _Jack,_ who plainly isn’t too old for this crap because he’s already making another snowball. Three to one.

“All right then,” Gabriel growls. “You asked for it.”

The first thing is the splitting of his cheeks, the nanites carving away bone and building new tissues to form two more eyes. Then a faint pressure in his ribs before four more arms disgorge from his sides, grey-black and not all that substantial but firm enough to throw snowballs. 

Jesse groans. “That just ain’t fair.”

It isn’t. Jack’s additional firepower helps, but Gabriel has arms to spare now and bats down their shots even as he hurls two at a time in opposite directions. He finds himself laughing—covered in snow from what he couldn’t block, the three others soon covered as well (he focuses on Jack to catch him up with the other two). Jesse’s the first one to give up, flopping down in a piled-up drift after a fourth hit to the face. Gabriel raises his six hands in surrender as the other two bracket him to make up for their lost soldier. “All right, all right. I give up. You win this round.”

Fareeha is breathing hard and unzips her jacket, peeling it off her shoulders. Jack comes over to offer Jesse his hand. “Sorry. For setting you up.”

Jesse takes it and rises. “I’m submitting a complaint.”

“You realize I’m the most senior officer on the base, right?”

“Well then, I guess you can just hang it on your damn wall.”

“Hey.” Gabriel heads for the door, smacking Jack’s ass on the way with two of his many hands. “Let’s hit the mess hall. I could use some hot chocolate.”

Fareeha raises a hand. “I’ll meet you there.”

Jesse follows him and Jack inside. “Uh…am I gonna have to go back outside after? For training?”

Gabriel shrugs. “Nah. Figure you got enough aerobic exercise just now.”

“Thank fuck,” Jesse mutters. 

The arms dissolve with a second’s thought; the eyes take a little more time, but he keeps them closed so it sort of just looks like there’s a pair of slits in his cheeks as the sockets are resorbed, the tissue deconstructed and reallocated. The skin finally seals over as he’s filling his paper cup from the dispenser. He sits at the end of a long table, keeping his distance from the next group down; he still isn’t a welcome face here, not really. The hot chocolate is only a little watery. Jack sits down across the table, and Jesse next to him with a cup in each hand. “There we go.” He takes a sip from the first cup. “By the way, you’re an asshole.”

Directed at Jack, who drinks, unperturbed. “You like doing pushups? ‘Cause you’re gonna be doing some if you keep this up.”

“Hey, _you_ were the one who framed _me!_ Why don’t you do some goddamn pushups?!”

“Don’t worry about it, Jesse,” Gabriel tells him. “When we spar later I’ll kick his ass extra hard for you.”

“Whoa there,” Jack protests. “Who says you’re gonna kick my ass?”

“I don’t know, the fact that I always kick your ass?”

Jack rests his chin in his hand. “Not _always,”_ he grumbles.

“Hello,” Fareeha says breathlessly, sliding into the seat beside Gabriel and accepting the cup Jesse hands her. “Gabriel, I have a gift for you. I was going to wait, but it seemed like you could use it.” She holds it out.

Unwrapped, and Gabriel takes it—black cloth, synthetic. It’s a hat. A beanie. A grin splits his face. “Did you make this one too?”

She snorts. “No. Do you think I remember how to knit?”

“Wait a second,” Jesse interjects. “You used to wear—she made you that?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” Because of course Jesse saw it, during their early days in Blackwatch—

Jesse guffaws. “Fareeha, you should have seen it, he never took that damn thing off. I remember once he left it inside a building that came under siege and ran back in to get it while I watched the shells coming in. Only ditched it when it got ripped up in a firefight. _Years_ later.”

“Oh.” Fareeha is staring into her cup. “I…I didn’t know you’d kept it.”

“‘Course I did. Warmest hat I ever owned,” he says. “Thanks, Fareeha. This is awesome.”

She reaches out and grasps his arm. “I’m glad you’re back, Gabriel.”

He slides the hat on. “So am I.”


	2. pre-relationship McGenji, violence/injury

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for eye trauma.  
> Goes in the continuity of the [Sublimation series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/575626).  
> Someone prompted me with how Jesse’s Deadeye business might work, so here's my take on it >:)  
> 

There’s no ice.

Fuck. Jesse thinks of drinking it straight, swilling the two fingers of gin as he replaces the lid on his contraband ice bucket. But the day wasn’t _that_ bad, and he wants to stretch this out over a couple of episodes at least. So he picks up the ice bucket, jams his feet into his boots, and heads for the mess.

It’s close to eleven at night so the halls are deserted, the lights dimmed down to pale wisps of blue blotting the black ceiling. Jesse glances over his shoulder now and then but there’s never anyone there in the dark. Probably. And who’s to say Reyes would chew him out for this, anyway? Fuckin’ ridiculous that a little gin is against regulations—

There’s light from under the workshop door.

An electric flicker, the mild scent of something being welded. Jesse doesn’t put in that kind of overtime anymore, has been done with trying to impress Reyes for a long time. So he continues on to the mess and fills the bucket and snags another 3 bags of nutrient-reinforced potato chips, which taste a little off but all in all could really be worse.

On the way back he hears a noise of pain from the workshop.

Sort of like a whimper. Maybe someone nicked themselves. Jesse slides the door open and sticks his head in. “Y’all okay in—oh.”

It’s the new guy.

Some of him, anyway. His head and torso and his one human arm are hanging suspended from the ceiling. His chest and stomach are opened up, mechanical arms buried in his insides. Sparks fly, illuminating tables piled with scattered machine parts; his unmasked face tightens. “I am fine. Thank you.”

Jesse stares. Genji. Right. “Uh—does that hurt?”

“No. It is— _ah.”_ A flinch as one of the metal arms jabs into him. “It is fine.”

“Uh-huh,” Jesse drawls. “Can’t you just, you know…go into sleep mode or something?”

Genji levels a sullen glare at him. “It doesn’t work that way. I still have a brain.”

Jesse leans on the door jamb. “So you just…sit there. For…how long does this take?”

“Several hours,” Genji mutters.

“Several hours. Staring into space while those things zap you.”

 _“Perform maintenance_ on me.”

“So that’s a yes.”

“It does not matter!” Genji snaps. “I already told you, I am fine!”

Jesse lingers there for another moment, thinking. Then he straightens, turns, and shuts the door behind him.

In his room he drops a couple ice cubes in the glass of gin and grabs a few things. Genji is still there on his return, gazing at the floor. But he starts when the door opens. “You—why are you still here?”

Jesse toes a couple of rolling chairs out from the long tables and kicks them across the room. On the first one he plants his computer and lets the screen fan out; the second he plops himself down on, adjusting the screen to make sure Genji can see it. “You like westerns?”

“What are you doing?” Genji asks tersely. “What is a western?”

“You know, a cowboy movie? They were real popular about a hundred years ago.”

“I have never seen one. I don’t like old movies. What are you doing?”

Jesse sighs, gritting his teeth. “I’m hangin’ out with you. Since it looked like you could use the company.”

“I do not require company. You do not need to do this. I am fine by myself.”

“God damnit, I _know!”_ Jesse snaps. “I’m doin’ it ‘cause I _want_ to! So just—watch the god damn movie with me, okay?”

A stunned silence. “I…very well.”

“Christ,” Jesse mutters, and starts the file. The MGM logo flickers onto the screen, the lion roaring.

He’s seen it a half-dozen times but all the hard glares and growled lines still put him in a good mood. The gin helps. Genji is quiet behind him except for the hisses of pain. Jesse offers him a bag of potato chips but apparently he isn’t supposed to eat during maintenance.

Jesse slumps in the chair, his glass balanced on his leg, the ice melting slowly. On the screen, John Wayne levels threats at a highwayman. Jesse smiles, his lips moving as he mouths the words…

“Agent McCree.”

Something warm is shaking him. He blinks with bleary eyes.

“Agent McCree. The movie is over.”

“Mm.” There’s drool on his chin. He swipes at it. “Jesse’s fine.”

“Ah. Then…Jesse.”

The movie _is_ over, the credits done, the screen idle. Must have fallen asleep. He grunts. “So? ‘dja like it?”

“I…yes. I did.” Genji removes his human hand from Jesse’s shoulder.

He chuckles. “I knew it. No one can resist John Wayne.” The glass has slipped down, resting balanced between his legs. He picks it up and glances back. “How much longer you got?”

“Not long.” He shrugs. “Less than an hour.”

“Hm. Then if you don’t mind, I might turn in. Since I can’t seem to stay awake.”

“That is all right. I…thank you. For doing this.”

“Hey, you don’t need me to watch a dang movie.” Jesse groans to his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?”

“All right.” Genji’s enhanced red eyes watch him. “Good night, Agent—Jesse.”

“Night.” Jesse waves, taking his computer and glass of melted ice with him.

——

“Fuckin’ son of a gun shit asshole dicksucking motherfucker _fuck,”_ Jesse mutters to himself, rather calmly, he thinks, as bullets pock the concrete above his head. That means they’re shooting from both sides now and he isn’t much for being surrounded.

Recon assignment. Right. Stockman dropped them in the middle of a hornet’s nest with nothing more than a pat on the ass. Jesse exhales as the afternoon thunder cracks outside, rolling through the juts and crags of the ruined city. Genji should be okay, he’s mostly made of metal. Reyes…well, who the fuck knows what Reyes is made of, but a few bullets won’t faze him much.

Jesse supposes he’s got body armor, which might stop some bullets if they’re fired from far away. The metal arm, too. The rest of him is soft and squishy and vulnerable to getting pulverized into meat.

He curls up, hiding his head. This building was mostly missed in the bombing the Omnics laid down here fifteen years ago but that doesn’t solve the larger problem of how he’s surrounded by mercs and he’s only got so many bullets. He sticks the rifle out the window above his head and fires blindly. Maybe that’ll scare them off. The ones on that side, anyway.

The _clink_ of metal on concrete.

Jesse knows the sound of a grenade and doesn’t even see it ’til he moves, launching himself towards the gap in the dividing wall. As he goes something nicks his eye.

He doesn’t really feel it yet because the grenade is detonating behind him—on the other side of the wall, at least, so he doesn’t get hurled across the room, only stumbles. But as soon as the echo of the blast fades in his ears, the eye explodes in pain.

Jesse drops his rifle andhunches, pressing his hands to the injured eye. Blood runs down his gloves, seeping into the edge of his shirt sleeve. It hurts. It really, really hurts. He takes in a shuddered breath and tries not to shout. Instead an agonized whine like a dog’s curls in his throat. Is that it? Is his eye ruined? How is he supposed to shoot? What will Blackwatch do to him if he can’t? Will they take him out back and put him down? He’d like to think his commander wouldn’t let that happen but despite the rank there are people above Reyes in the food chain.

It’s stupid to be thinking about that right now anyway because he’s about to be killed by a dozen Algerian mercenaries, not Blackwatch. Jesse tries to concentrate but he hasn’t felt agony like this since his arm got blown off in Ukraine eight years ago. He can feel the pulsing in his eye, how the blood gushes rhythmically between his gloved fingers. His good eye is tearing up but at the sound of approaching footsteps he blinks furiously, trying to make it focus. Dark shapes in front of him, and he raises the rifle in his off-hand, metal finger searching for the trigger—

A brilliant flash of silver. Shouts of surprise—Jesse would know what they were saying if he’d brushed up on the language like Reyes asked—and the deafening rattle of rifle fire in close quarters. The ringing of metal and gurgles of pain. Jesse scrubs his good eye with his sleeve.

Genji.

Crouched in front of him, blade (and mechanical arm) a blur in the air. A human shield—better; that body of his is bulletproof, and with those enhanced eyes his sword can block whatever bullets might strike his exposed flesh or try to sneak past him.

Not quite a dozen, but Jesse counts eight people fanned out in the room, one already on the ground. The problem, of course, is that Genji can’t move or Jesse will be vulnerable to getting shot, and he must be out of those throwing blades he favors because he’s not using them.

So Jesse’s still going to die, just not as soon. Genji’s still deflecting their bullets—Jesus, what’s that sword made of?—but there’ll have to come a moment when he can’t stop _every_ bullet and Jesse will be struck—or _Genji_ will, because he isn’t _all_ metal—

A shadow falls across the doorway.

A resonant _crack_ and one of the soldiers falls. That’s a shotgun report.

Reyes.

He stalks into the room, pulling fire from the seven remaining soldiers. Jesse knows he’s been angry recently—well, for years, really—but this is…more. His face is dark as the thunderclouds outside but his eyes are bright as flames. The bullets riddle him, punching through his head, chest, stomach, and legs, blood exploding onto the wall behind him. But his body hardly jerks, and wisps of black escape from the wounds. Something glimmers inside them. The shots tear into his face, shredding his nose and cheeks, exposing teeth, shattering his skull.

He raises the shotgun and fires.

No wasted shots—would be hard to waste them in a cramped space like this anyway, the shotgun spraying into the soldiers’ unarmored bodies. There’s nowhere to go. Reyes is blocking the exit, Genji planted right beside the opening to the next room. They shouldn’t be shooting at Reyes. It’s obviously not working. But they do anyway, until there’s no one left standing and just nine people dead or dying on the ground.

Reyes jams in a new clip of cartridges and finishes off the ones who are still moving. The muzzle flashes, the shots deafening in the concrete room. Jesse cringes and covers one ear with his free hand.

Reyes looks…bad. His face is ripped up, and dark blood soaks his clothes. When there’s no more movement from the mercenaries he kneels beside one of the corpses—

Genji turns, blocking Jesse’s view. “Are you all right?”

He swallows, pain radiating from his eye, tightening his throat and turning his stomach. “I think—think I’m okay. Just my—just my eye.”

Genji grasps his arm. “We’ll get you to safety.”

Kind of humiliating, if he’s honest with himself. Supposed to be an elite agent and all that. But his eye got shot and it hurts, it fuckin’ _hurts—_

“McCree.” Reyes now, kneeling in front of him. Whole again like he didn’t just stand in a rain of bullets. “What’s wrong?”

“I think my eye’s gone,” he whispers, embarrassed like a child caught disobeying his parents.

“God damnit, would you stop fucking losing body parts when you’re in the field with me?” Reyes growls. “Listen, can you run?”

Jesse nods, struggling to his feet with Genji’s help. There’ll be more on the way. And there’s flexfoam in the truck. Maybe that’ll stop the—stop all the blood pouring from his empty, broken socket—

“It will be all right,” Genji murmurs at his side. “We’re going to get out.”

Right. They’re going to get out.

Reyes stalks ahead of them, glowering at their flanks, but no one else shows up to get in their way. God damnit. He was almost out before they pinned him. The eye feels swollen now. Even though it’s not there anymore.

The Jeep is stashed in a storage locker a few blocks away, and Jesse climbs inside and curls up in the back of it. Reyes is in the driver’s seat and jams it into gear, the engine rumbling, tires grinding on the broken-up pavement. Genji digs out the first aid kit. “Please lower your hand.”

Jesse obeys with reluctance as Genji shakes the bottle of flexfoam and points the thin red tip at his eye—where his eye used to be, the pale green foam squirting out and filling a hole in his face that wasn’t there before. Jesse squeezes his hands between his thighs so he doesn’t bat Genji away. The flexfoam will help it start healing, he knows that.

“Do you want some painkillers?”

Genji holds up a small, capped syringe. Jesse covers his eye back up shakes his head. “I’m fine—I’m fine, I don’t need ‘em.”

“God damnit, McCree, just take the fucking painkillers!” Reyes snarls from the front. But Genji still waits for Jesse’s permission, and only when given a nod does he flick the cap off and jam the needle into Jesse’s thigh.

The effect is nearly instantaneous, a gentle warmth radiating throughout Jesse’s body. It takes a little longer to reach his eye but it soothes the frantic, prickling pain, and cautiously Jesse lowers his hand—only to clap it back on again when the Jeep jars over a chunk of rubble, terrified for a split-second that everything will fall out of the socket and spill onto his lap.

Someone is grasping his thigh, squeezing gently.“It will be all right. We will take you back to base. They can fix you there.”

Jesse plants his own hand over Genji’s—the wrong one; his prosthetic arm senses pressure but nothing else so he switches. He’s still got gloves on but he can feel how the metal plates reinforcing Genji’s fingers are cold from the late autumn air but the synthetic flesh beneath is warm. Each bump and jolt of the Jeep makes him think he’s about to fall right apart. But this—Genji’s hand here is holding him together.

Reyes is shouting into his comm in the front seat. Jesse’s vision starts to clear a little, tears drying on his face. Genji gazes at him with steady eyes, the red glow dimmed now outside of combat. An ember smoldering in the dark afternoon. “You will be all right, Jesse,” he murmurs.

For some reason—some unknown, blessed reason—Jesse believes him.

——

The infirmary.

There’s something holding his eye shut. Does he have an eye? The Blackwatch docs didn’t really tell him what they were going to do before they pushed the drugs in and put him under.

“Hey, McCree.”

Jesse turns his head.

A white curtain surrounds them, giving them some privacy. Reyes’s hand rests on his arm. “How are you doing?”

“Hm.” Jesse clears his throat. “Uh…I don’t know. Tired.”

Reyes lets out a long sigh, leaning back in his chair. “They had you under for a long time. The anesthesia’s gonna take a while to wear off.”

“A—a long time?” Jesse gingerly probes his eye—covered in a bulky gauze dressing. “What did they do?”

“Gave you a new eye,” Reyes says. “And god damnit, Shimada, I told you _three times_ to go get some rest.” He reaches behind him and yanks the curtain back.

Genji is there, crouched on the next bed, cringing. “I apologize, Commander. I was…concerned.”

“Yeah, I fucking gathered,” Reyes shoots back. “You know, Stockman’s really not big on all this _concern_ business. Just the opposite, actually.”

“I—I am sorry.” He hops off the bed—

“No, I didn’t say that.” Reyes rises slowly, rubbing his face. “Just…be careful. You got that?”

“Yes!” Genji straightens. “Understood, Commander!”

“Christ,” Reyes mutters. “Stockman wanted to see me so I’m gonna go deal with that. McCree, I’ll come check on you later.”

“Thanks, boss,” Jesse says quietly.

Then Reyes leaves the infirmary and Genji sits down in his chair.

For a moment they don’t say anything—Jesse thinks it’s a moment; he’s not feeling too sharp right now. Then Genji says, “I’m sorry.”

Jesse snorts. _“You_ ain’t got nothing to be sorry for. Honestly, I’m surprised I’ve only lost an arm by this point. You know the kind of missions they send us on.”

“No, I—I’m sorry about the doctors. They should have asked you.”

Oh.

“Do _you_ know what they did to me?” Jesse asks.

Genji shifts, putting his heels up on the crossbar of the chair, jamming his hands between his knees. “They put in an electronic eye and…enhanced your optic nerve and part of your brain.”

Jesse stares. “They did something to my brain?”

“Only the part that is involved with sight. I believe.”

“I didn’t want that,” he blurts out.

Genji clasps his hands together, one metal, one flesh. “Yes. I…I am sorry.”

Jesse realizes he doesn’t know a whole lot about his fellow operative and that he might have just said something real stupid. “Uh.” That’s not a whole lot better. “So when you got…you know.” Batting a thousand. “When you got—“

“When they made me this body,” Genji interrupts. “What about it?”

“Did you get any, you know. Input?”

Genji smiles a little at his knees. “No. I was not really in a state of mind to be making decisions like that.”

“But did they ask you?”

“I…no.”

“Well, that’s some bullshit.” Jesse struggles to sit up, grasping the bed railing. His body feels so damn heavy. “It’s _your_ body. They should have asked.”

Genji shrugs. “It does not matter anymore. It is done.”

The frustrating thing is he’s probably right. That’s the body he’s got now, and it’s a fucking complicated one. Putting him in a new body would probably be dangerous. Jesse takes a good look at him for the first time in…ever, maybe, the fine threading of the synthetic muscle, the faint glow beneath the vestigial ports where they modified away the tubes and wires that used to be sticking out of him. “Would you change anything?” Jesse asks. “About your body, I mean. If you could.”

Genji shrugs. “I have not given it much thought. I suppose…” He spreads his hands in front of him as if comparing them side by side. “It is very good for stealing and killing and all of the things we do here. I only wish it were good for other things as well.”

Jesse has caught sight of the side table by now and asks, “Hey, so I know you said you can’t eat during maintenance, but, I mean— _can_ you eat? When you’re not getting zapped?”

 _“Repaired._ And yes, I can. The food is simply destroyed after I swallow it.”

“Good.” Jesse jerks his head. “Because I sure as hell can’t eat all that Jello by myself.”

There’s a bilayer of Jello cups sitting on the table in red, green, and orange. Genji grins. “I will of course do my best to assist you.”

There’s only one spoon so they alternate. It might be the painkillers but Jesse at one point starts laughing uncontrollably at the way the Jello wobbles when he scoops it out, and Genji is baffled but laughs right along, bubbly and light.

In a little while the doctor comes in to check on him with Reyes on her tail so Genji rises and heads for the door. The doctor is saying something but Jesse’s not really listening. Behind Reyes Genji lingers at the door and waves with his human hand. Jesse lifts his own human hand and waves right back.

——

He’s at the shooting range.

His standard-issue sidearm is at his hip, holstered. His revolver is in hand.

Targets are at forty yards. Jesse frowns at the control panel, reaches up and taps. The targets glide back on their tracks. Fifty yards. Sixty.

“How are you?”

Jesse turns. Genji steps cautiously through the door. “Fine,” Jesse tells him.

“Ah. Then…it does not hurt anymore?”

He rubs his mechanical eye. “It’s…not too bad.” The surgery was four weeks ago yesterday. The soreness is gone, but the burning’s still there. _Nerve pain,_ the doctor said. She expects it to stay. “What’re you doing here? Workin’ on your shooting?”

It’s a joke. Genji has a distaste for guns and avoids practicing with them as a rule. He waves his hand. “No, I just—I was…I wanted to see how you were recovering.”

“Oh.” Jesse stares for a second, then blinks. “Uh. That’s mighty kind of you.”

Genji shrugs. “You checked on me when I was undergoing maintenance. I am trying to repay your kindness.”

“You ain’t gotta repay nothing. Any decent person woulda done the same thing.”

“No one else did,” Genji answers.

Jesse doesn’t really know what to say to that. The target is at a hundred yards now. He can hit a hundred yards if he takes a second to aim, and he lifts the revolver—

—and fires.

He _had_ the shot. _Knew_ he had it, somehow. The screen shows a perfect hit, right in the target’s head. Jesse frowns, looking down at his gun, his fingers curled around the grip. How did he…

The eye. “A good shot,” Genji observes.

Nervous suddenly, Jesse taps the control panel again. The targets recede. A hundred and ten yards. A hundred and twenty. A hundred and thirty. All the way back on their track until they hit the rear wall. Maximum range. Two hundred yards. Jesse exhales, raises the revolver, sights down the barrel. No instant pull of the trigger this time, and he lines up the shot and squeezes—

A tiny twitch of muscle, his wrist tightening minutely just as the trigger clicks. That wasn’t him. Again the screen shows a bullet hole square in the center of the target’s forehead.

Jesse lowers the revolver. “Oh,” he mumbles.

Genji comes up beside him and rests his metal hand on Jesse’s metal arm. “You’ll get used to it.”


	3. Gabriel Reyes, Blackwatch era

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes from my other OW stories in re: timeline and what's going on with Gabe's body. (He's sort of in transition at this point in that respect.)

“Fuck,” Gabriel snarls, ducking back down below the window.

Across the room Genji sits leaned up against the side of a destroyed couch, twirling a knife through his human fingers. “I would have to agree.”

It’s not that they’re being shot at. That’s very annoying, yes, but it’s nothing new. Hong has enemies, more so since Gabriel and Genji have been helping him expand his business ventures.

The people shooting up Hong’s second-largest factory complex right now aren’t Chinese underground. They’re Overwatch. Which means Gabriel isn’t allowed to shoot them, and also he might feel bad. Not quite sure on that latter point.

“What do we do, Commander?” Genji asks mildly. A line of bullet holes cracks into the crystalcrete above his head.

“Well, we can’t fucking let them get Hong, because that’s gonna massively fuck up our op, and we’ve been on it for six fucking months and I’m not gonna go back and tell fucking Stockman that Overwatch fucked up the op while I just fucking sat back and let Jack fucking Morrison take our fucking guy.” Gabriel exhales through gritted teeth, then sticks his rifle out the window and fires a quick salvo of bullets.

“Mm.” Genji nods thoughtfully. “So we are going to aid Hong’s escape.”

“Basically, yeah.” Gabriel holds his hand out. “Give me your grenades. I’ll slow ‘em down, you get Hong away from here.”

“Understood.” Genji leans across the small room, handing over his collection of five cap grenades. “Would you like me to send you help?”

Gabriel stows them. “No, because Hong’s guys will be shooting to kill and we should probably try not to kill any of Overwatch’s people.”

Genji frowns. “Then I should stay to help you.”

“No, you should _follow my fucking orders_ and get Hong out,” Gabriel snaps.

Genji’s jaw tightens in irritation, his enhanced red eyes locked on Gabriel’s; then his mask extends to shield his face. “Fine.”

Shit. Gabriel rubs his forehead. “Sorry. I just…” He waves a hand. “Never mind. I’ll be okay on my own. You get out of here.”

Genji rises, the setting sun catching his red gaze. “I will meet you later.”

“Right. Be careful.”

Then Genji is gone, out the back window of the office. Gabriel trusts him to get Hong out, at the very least.

He starts switching the grenades to mine setting, dials up the sensor radius as high as it’ll go and spools down the force to its second lowest value. That should scare them without killing anyone. Some of Hong’s guys are still exchanging fire with Overwatch. Gabriel uses it as cover, darting between the garages and assembly lines and storage sheds to plant the grenades at strategic locations. Ones that’ll give the Overwatch agents pause when they start pushing through. Wishes they’d waited another goddamn hour or two so he’d have some better cover in the dusk—listening to bullets ringing off the tin walls as he hides behind corners—but nothing in this goddamn life has been easy for him, so why would that change now?

The gunfire starts to trickle off. Hong’s guys are retreating. That’s good, at least. Now Gabriel just has to not get killed. Or caught. That would be worse.

A muffled explosion from the far garage. His work. Gabriel sticks his head out from behind a storage container and starts shooting. Still blind—can’t see anyone outside the building. But it’s better that way. It wouldn’t be good if any of these agents died by friendly fire.

A white flash from the garage window. Gabriel swears and heaves himself around the corner again.

A series of _thuds._ That’s a pulse rifle. Not that Blackwatch gets a chance to play around with those, but Gabriel’s done his research. Nasty weapons. He’s too exposed here, has to get inside the big central factory where there’s plenty of cover. It’s maybe a fifteen-yard dash in front of him, and with this tin box at his back he should have some protection.

Gabriel takes a deep breath and runs.

His legs pump, strength flowing into them like spicular crystals tumbling through his veins. He flies over the asphalt, boots grinding on the granular surface. The metal door approaches and he yanks it open. A scattering of shots thump liquidly into the wall beside him. He ducks inside—

Only to be thrown forward by the kinetic impact of plasma fire slamming into his shoulder. Gabriel tumbles to the ground, hissing. _Fuck,_ that’s painful. He heaves himself to his feet and staggers forward—around a conveyor belt, a heavy pallet trundling past him. God _damn,_ that arm hurts. He tacks right and sinks down behind a pile of empty crates, grasping the wound. Can’t stay here. Overwatch will be closing in. But he just needs a second to recover—

The door clangs open. Gabriel freezes, trying to quiet his harsh breathing. The scuff of footsteps. A wave of pain from the arm that makes him want to throw up; he chokes back a groan, squeezing his eyes shut. Sweat breaks out over his forehead and back. The footsteps draw closer. The edge of a blue uniform, a red glint. He reaches out, groping for his rifle—

“ _Gabe?”_

The red tactical visor retracts. Fuck. “It had to be you,” Gabriel growls.

Jack Morrison, pulse rifle in hand but lowered. Looking tired but strong and uninjured. “What the hell are you doing here?!”

“Trying to salvage my op,” Gabriel retorts. “From you and your people fucking it up. Which you’re doing a pretty fucking good job of, by the way.”

 _“Your_ op?” Jack is comically flabbergasted, like he couldn’t even fathom that _someone else_ might be trying to do some good. “Gabe, _we’re_ on Hong. He’s been getting too powerful, we’re taking him out.”

“Oh no you’re fucking not,” Gabriel snaps. “We’ve been backing him, Jack, we’ve brought down a half-dozen of his competitors and now those strings he was pulling on in Russia and Korea are gonna help us reel in some more nice, juicy targets. You can’t take him in yet.”

Jack stares. “Are you _nuts?_ He’s destroying the goddamn city!”

Gabriel shrugs. “It’s not a whole lot worse than it was before. And it’s only temporary.”

“No. Sorry, Gabe, but that’s not acceptable. Hong goes down today. You can help us or get out of our way.”

Gabriel can’t help but chuckle. That’s no choice at all. “Or I can tell you to fuck off.”

“Gabe. I’m serious.”

“And shortsighted. Let us work. We’ll get a way bigger haul if you leave him with us.”

“I already told you no!” Jack takes a step forward, real anger breaking through on his face. “You can’t just—screw over a bunch of innocent people just to make your bust! That’s not how it works!”

Gabriel tips his head back against the crates, exasperated. Should have known better than to try and reason with him. “You know how many _more_ people we’re gonna help by waiting? Use your fucking head, Jack.”

Jack’s eyes are narrowed, his mouth set in a hard frown. “Get out of here, Gabe. We’re going in. If you stay and get yourself shot, just remember it’s your own goddamn fault.”

Then the red tactical visor descends again and he turns his back, leaving Gabriel sitting on the floor alone with a burning hole in his arm. But the wound feels…strange and Gabriel is afraid of what he’ll see but peels his hand away anyway.

Under the melted clothing something black and turbid seethes. Gabriel looks away, gathers up his rifle, and runs.

Another muffled explosion. Gabriel dodges around towering machines, pits filled with congealed chemical waste, mechanical limbs suspended and waiting. His arm is filled with insects. Or that’s how it feels, at least, and that might be preferable to the truth. Long splashes of orange light spill through the tall windows, and he avoids them; there’s a _clang_ far behind as the door bangs open. Still a couple of grenades left at his belt, and as he exits the other side of the factory he leaves one as a gift.

Gunfire from behind, getting closer now. That means Hong’s guys are still pulling back. Around the corner Gabriel spots more magnesium-white muzzle flashes, hears the strange, blunt reports. How many of those goddamn rifles do they have?

Time to fall back. He slips into a warehouse and sprints. Maybe he can find a spot to hunker down and buy Genji more time.

He bursts out the door. To his left the fence with the forest beyond; to his right a small cluster of storage sheds, so he picks one and slips inside. The window sticks in the track but after some tugging it lurches open, and he sits below it, sticks his rifle out, and fires off a blind burst.

An answering burst of plasma slugs thud into the outside of the wall, warming the metal at his back. Gabriel shoots again, the rifle jumping in his hand. He hopes the wall doesn’t melt.

A shooting star arcs through the window and explodes.

Gabriel ducks his head as he’s thrown sideways across the room, back slamming into a rusty container. The breath is punched out of him all at once. It burns. His stomach. He cracks open his eyes.

Raw plasma is spattered all over the floor, glowing white, misting slowly as it evaporates into the air. It burns. Gabriel looks down.

White droplets hiss on his bulletproof vest, outlining the plasma splash sinking into his middle. Something bubbles in the mess of melted Kevlon and flesh.

Oh.

Gabriel touches it gingerly and for some reason that’s what sets the pain off, a hot, liquid agony roiling in his gut and making him sick to his stomach. If he still has a stomach. His legs jerk, flooded with pins and needles as he tries to drag himself back behind a storage container. It burns. It burns so badly. A moan of agony issues low and animal from his throat. Behind him he leaves a broad swath of red and black, a wide paint-stroke marking his trail.

Fuck. Dying for Qian fucking Hong. What does it fucking matter at this point? Jack hates him for good. Genji and McCree will be fine on their own, now that he’s pretty sure he’s made them hate him too. He didn’t want to end up here but here he is.

Another wave of agony. His body shudders, and he heaves up a thick glut of blood, bile, and black, the sour metallic fluid coating the inside of his mouth and nose. He scrapes the back of his sleeve across his lips and coughs, curling up behind the container. As good a place as any to die.

His face feels cold, his head fuzzy. Blood pumps from his ruined stomach, soaking his pants. Not long now. Maybe he should say something to Genji over comms. But no, that might make him turn back. And it’s dangerous here.

His brain is shutting down, he can feel it. Losing blood to the blackened pulp that’s left of his gut. The shining surface glimmers in the light of the setting sun, pulsing with the frantic beating of his heart as it strains to compensate for all the blood burbling, tortured, out of him. Maybe they’re coming to finish him off. That would be nice. The searing heat in his middle is awful. He coughs and comes up with another mouthful of bile. Tastes like stomach acid and slag.

A figure beside him, a red glint at the eyes. Gabriel blinks slowly. He is lifted and carried over someone’s shoulder. Doesn’t know where they’re taking him. Won’t do much good either way. If they want to save him they’re too late. If they want to interrogate him, same deal.

What were his final words? Who was the last person he spoke to? Jack, that was it. In the factory. Probably said something in anger.

He doesn’t have words—hardly has the breadth of thought to encompass how much he wishes that none of it had ever happened, that he and Jack were still okay or more. Instead he’s in Blackwatch and Jack is king of the world and everything they had is ash smeared underfoot. It didn’t have to be like this but Jack made it that way. Or they both did. If only he could fix it, right now. There must be _something_ left. Something that wasn’t completely burned away.

A grunt. Gabriel’s grimy vision comes up with a chain link fence. Climbing. Then a _thump_ and a stumble as they land on the other side. His rescuer lays him against a tree.

Gabriel’s head lolls forward, and he finds himself peering down. His stomach looks like a roiling black sea.“Jesus,” his rescuer breathes. The faint clinking of—what is it? A can of flexfoam being shaken, and the hissing as the pale green foam sprays out over his middle. Gabriel laughs and then chokes on the bloody, metallic bile sitting at the base of his throat.

Then there’s an explosion somewhere and leaves scrape on leaves, his rescuer rising and running off.

Where did the burning go? Gabriel is cold all over. Doesn’t like it. He feels sick but can’t throw up. With a great effort he tips his head back, staring up at the canopy. The fir trees are shifting shapes of black in his fading vision, creasing and fluttering with the wind. No longer shapes. Their outlines ripple and swim together slowly, and they recede above him in shadow, shimmering as he sinks beneath dark water. If he’s going to die he wishes it would hurry up. But there’s someone, somewhere, telling him, _this won’t kill you._

Gabriel isn’t so sure about that. A quart of raw plasma to the gut will kill just about anyone.

He shuts his eyes.

——

When he wakes again he’s being dragged through the forest on his back by what’s left of his bulletproof vest.

“Hm.” He reaches out and grasps at nothing; his hand falls and he catches leaves between his fingers.

“Commander. You’re awake.”

Genji glances over his shoulder, red eyes glinting in a fluttering shaft of sunset light. Oh. It was him. Gabriel takes an experimental breath. Cold air rushes into his lungs. He pats his stomach gently—the flexfoam still there, and not even leaking blood around the edges. “Thanks,” he croaks. “For coming back for me.”

“You are welcome,” Genji replies.

“You get Hong out?”

“Yes.”

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

“I think I can walk, actually.”

“Oh! Of course.”

Genji releases him and he rises gingerly, one hand on the flexfoam. It moves with him, bending and straightening. Still no leaking of blood, although his pants remain soaked with it.

Genji is staring. “Commander…”

Gabriel waves a hand. “I’ll be fine.”

Genji watches him for a moment; then he nods. “As you say. Did you find out why Overwatch is here?”

“Yeah, Jack wants to bring in Hong now. Thinks he’s gotten too powerful.” Gabriel cracks a smile. “I told him that was our fault. He wasn’t happy.”

Genji comes over and grasps Gabriel’s arm, steadying him as they walk. “Was he the one who did that to you?”

“Don’t know.” Gabriel scratches his beard. “Doubt it, though.”

“Are you sure?” Genji murmurs.

“Yeah,” Gabriel says. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I hope this is not too forward, but I have heard you two fighting—“

“I’d still take a bullet for him,” Gabriel interrupts. “If that tells you anything.”

Genji sighs. “Actually, I think I understand.”

“Hey. We gotta move Hong. Overwatch is gonna be looking for him.”

“That will be difficult. They have many agents here.”

“I know, I know. Leave Jack Morrison to me.”

They walk in silence for a time. Gabriel’s middle is still cold and numb, and his legs still weak, but the sense that he’s going to die isn’t there anymore. Christ. Who takes raw plasma to the gut and lives?

Him, apparently. Great.

“For what it is worth,” Genji says. “I hope one day the two of you can become friends again.”

Gabriel press a hand to his face because he feels his eyes pricking and that pisses him off. He’s got other people now. Jesse, Genji.

But he misses Jack still for some stupid fucking reason. No, he knows the reason. “Yeah,” he mutters. “I hope so too.”

 


	4. Jesse + Fareeha

Reyes’s face fills the screen, covering over the TV show Jesse was watching. “McCree.“

Jesse jolts and drops his tablet on the bed, swearing. Then he picks it back up. “The hell you want? I’m supposed to be on break.”

“I need you to go pick up Fareeha. She’s at the Washington.”

He snorts. “What, she get her keys taken away or something?”

“Her mom was killed yesterday and she’s been there for over four hours.” On screen Reyes glances over his shoulder. “I’d do it, but I’m in Thailand.”

Jesse rubs his forehead. He’s worked with Fareeha a few times. Doesn’t think she noticed him too much. He sure noticed her, though. “How the fuck you know she’s been there for four hours?”

“I have my ways.”

Right. “What if she don’t want me to pick her up?”

“You’re an agent of Blackwatch. Figure something out.” Another glance over his shoulder. “Okay, I gotta go. Talk to you later.”

_“Commander—“_

The screen goes black before his TV show flickers on again. Jesse tips his head back and groans; then he flings the tablet across the bed and goes to find his boots.

——

He leaves his bike outside and pushes open the door.

Fareeha is at the bar. There are three empty seats on either side of her. The atmosphere is…tense, Jesse judges, and his electronic eye picks out droplets of blood staining the wood floor.

Fareeha’s got a swollen eye and a fat lip and is still painfully attractive, not in a Hollywood movie-star kind of way but in the kind of way where he’s watched her dispatch a half-dozen Talon agents inside of four seconds with truly staggering precision and all he wants in the world is for  _her_  to be his commander instead of Reyes. She’s got a double of what looks like whiskey that she swills slowly, and the bartender only takes his eyes off her when one of the other patrons gathers the courage to edge up to the bar to order a drink. As Jesse watches she sniffles and wipes her nose, a dark smear of blood coming away on the back of her hand.

“Hey,” Jesse whispers to the bouncer. “What happened?”

The man shrugs. “She picked a fight. I mean, the guys were dicks, so I didn’t work too hard to break it up.”

Jesse heaves a sigh. “Right. Thanks.”

He approaches the bar with caution, hands raised. He didn’t know Colonel Amari died. It’s a real shame. She was a great sniper and a better soldier, and she took an interest in him when even Reyes’s patience was tried. “Hey…Captain Amari?”

Fareeha starts and looks up, but the surprise resolves quickly and she goes back to swilling her drink. “Agent McCree.”

“Uh—Jesse’s fine. We’re not in the field.” He pauses, thinking how best to approach this. “So, it’s getting late…you want me to call you a ride back home?”

“No.” She tosses the whiskey back and sets the glass down. “I’m not done drinking.”

Shit. “Captain, I heard about your mother and I just wanted to say I’m real sorry. She was a formidable person.”

“Yes. And someone shot her dead.” Fareeha beckons at the bartender, who comes uncertainly closer.

Jesse waves him off. “Listen…maybe you should head home and sleep this off for a while.” He rests a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Fareeha spins around and socks him in the nose.

Jesse squawks in surprise and reels, holding his nose. Fareeha is shouting.  _“Sleep this off?!”_ She advances on him, throwing another punch that he barely manages to knock to one side. “You want me to  _sleep off_  my mother’s  _death?!”_

“No!” His nose is gushing blood. Fareeha lashes out again, and her fist thuds into Jesse’s forearm.  _Ow._  “I meant sleep off the drin—fuck—“

Fareeha launches a combo that Jesse only sort of recognizes, which means he’s not going to block it and indeed Fareeha’s knuckles smash into his jaw and his head snaps to the side, making him stumble. The only reason he doesn’t fall on his ass is because the bouncer catches him.

“Say it again to me!” Fareeha shouts, eyes blazing. “Say it again! My mother was  _killed_  yesterday! I don’t even know where she was!”

“Fareeha—“ Jesse rights himself, raising his hands. “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m just trying to help. I’m sorry about your mother.”

She stares at him open-mouthed for a moment; then she hides her face all at once and her shoulders shudder.

Uh oh. Jesse goes forward and guides her to the door. “Let’s get you out of here,” he mutters.

She rides behind him on the bike, warm against his back in the freezing air. Now and then she shudders with another sob. Jesse speeds through the night, weaving between cars. The display between the handlebars shows the route to the address she gave him. Her arms are tight around his waist, and her breath is hot through the back of his shirt.

The building is one of those swanky apartment towers on the west shore and the garage attendant isn’t too happy about letting Jesse and his bike inside, but Fareeha surfaces to glare at the guy and the gate rises. Jesse parks somewhere he’s probably not supposed to but it’s close to the doors. Fareeha jabs clumsily at the elevator buttons and sends them to two extra floors before she grabs Jesse’s elbow with an iron grip and drags him out into the hallway.

Her apartment looks like a hotel room—barely lived in. Fareeha tosses her jacket onto the island. “Do you want something to drink?”

Jesse hops up onto a stool. “I could go for a glass of water.”

She fills two glasses and sets one down in front of him. “Was it Gabriel?”

Jesse runs a hand through his hair, wincing. “Uh…maybe.”

“Of course it was,” she sighs, and sits down beside him. “I’m sorry for punching you.”

“Ah, I’ve had worse.” He touches his lip gingerly. “You and me might be twins tomorrow, though.”

“I’m sorry, I just—“ Fareeha’s face crumples, but she masters herself and takes a deep breath. “She was distancing herself from me. I wanted to join Overwatch so badly and she wouldn’t let me. Absolutely not. I hadn’t spoken to her in months.”

“Captain—“

She huffs dismissively. “You visited my mother’s house and she cooked you dinner. You can call me Fareeha.”

“Fareeha. I worked with your mom on a few ops. She loved the hell out of you and she knew you were pissed at her and she did feel bad,” Jesse says. “But she was  _so_  proud of you. At how you made captain at twenty-two and how every op you led went off perfect.”

“But I was so cold to her.” Fareeha rests her head in her hands.

“It’s okay. Colonel Amari never resented you. She knew it was all ‘cause of what she said.” Jesse hesitates, remembering what happened last time he tried this, but he reaches out and grasps Fareeha’s shoulder anyway. “Wherever she is now, you better believe she still loves you.”

Fareeha sniffles. “Thank you for saying so.” She takes a sip of water and presses the glass to her temple. “You know…it’s late. You can stay on my couch if you like.”

Jesse’s about to remind her that he’s a covert ops agent and does most of his work in the darkest hours of night, but then it penetrates his dense brain that she might be asking for  _her_  sake and not  _his,_  for the purpose of not waking up in an empty apartment the day after learning of her mother’s death. “Uh…yeah. It’s late. Thanks for offering.”

“Mm.” She rises, rubbing her eyes. The left one will be black by morning. “You’re a good man, Jesse McCree.”

Jesse smiles at his glass. “That’s generous, Captain Amari, but I’ll take it.”


	5. Gabriel + Sombra, Talon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my work for the Reaper Zine!

_ “Reaper.” _

Like a shortwave radio or a black-and-white film. Gabriel tries to open his eyes. They’re glued shut but the nanomachines hasten to build him new ones, and his cheeks split and stretch to accommodate. He sees in shades of gray.

_ “Reaper.” _

Still staticky and distorted. Gabriel gropes at the side table; his hand is soft, long-fingered, black as night. It falls apart like congealed blood when he tries to grasp the comm. 

_ “Reaper, come in. We have work for you.” _

He sits up. His body shifts like sand, piling among the tossed-up covers. He stares at his hand, the worker-ants, the nanomachines scuttling to construct fingers that won’t disintegrate at the smallest stress. 

_ “God damnit, Reaper.”  _ The sound sharpens, then dives quickly into static again. _ “Are you there?” _

_ Come on, _ he prays.  _ Come on.  _ The hand grows. Out to the second knuckle now. Guzman is still talking but not distorted anymore, backed only by an electronic whine.  _ Come on. _ Gabriel blinks and finds his eyes, the ones that are supposed to be there, cracking open at last. 

“I swear to God, if you don’t answer me—“

He snatches up the comm. “Yeah, I’m here. What do you want?”

An exasperated sigh. “We need you to retrieve some documents. Tonight. Sombra’s closing in fast and you have to get there before she does.”

Gabriel goes to rise but doesn’t trust his legs to…exist, really. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

———

There’s a flicker at the end of the hall.

The soldier’s body lies at his feet, head twisted sideways. Shotguns are faster but this is quieter and Gabriel wants to avoid tripping the alarm. So far everyone he’s killed has borne a mundane weapon but if they’ve got anything plasma-loaded, he would prefer not to find out. That stuff burns through the nanomachines like paper.

There’s a flicker at the end of the hall. Gabriel glides past the corpse and follows. 

A snatch of white, he thinks. The machines retrieve the memory from short-term storage and play it back. Yes, white. Strange. The uniforms are gunmetal gray. He rounds the corner but the flicker, in the dim blue glow of the wall lights, darts out of sight again. 

Gabriel pursues. He  _ does _ have legs now, and they do propel him, sort of. His body is still organic, the cells pressed together and clinging to each other. But he’s still unstable and as he goes his legs act as pilings, provide new centers for the electromagnetic field to pull him forward when the simple force of walking threatens to drag him apart. 

_ Come on, _ he thinks. The vault isn’t far.  _ Come on. Just have to stay together a little longer.  _ He’s tried to control it over the years, but over the years it’s gotten harder and the nanomachines less obedient. They just…go wrong, or do something else. It’s  _ his _ body. Or it’s supposed to be, he reflects. But Moira’s work was fatally flawed—no, not fatally, just the opposite. Nothing can kill him now. Not even being crushed beneath two hundred thousand tons of collapsing rubble. 

The price, of course, being that he can’t control his own body. Moira’s ambition stole that from him. With her faulty code running through his veins, he destabilizes more by the day. And there’s not a goddamn thing he can do to change it. The powerlessness frustrates him, yes. But more than that, it’s...humiliating. He saved the world once. And now—

A smear of white at the far end of the hall. Gabriel squints and his eyes ache, the machines distorting the gel-filled orbs. The smear comes into focus. Person-shaped, he thinks. Short—small, like a child. A white dress and—

No.

She’s gone again. Gabriel runs, flows down the corridor. How could she be here? Is she a ghost? Did he make her, the machines building off of a blueprint from his jumbled brain? He rounds the corner to see the door before him snap shut and he dives forward, yanking at the handle. To no avail. So he bursts apart and pours through the cracks. He needs to see. Needs to know. Sensory data from the scattered machines turns into information as he’s rebuilding and then transitions smoothly into image, into the quiet scrape of a brown sandal on the metal floor. At last Gabriel stands in the empty conference room and she stands there in front of him, hands clasped behind her back.

Gabriel opens his mouth. His lips and tongue are human. His vocal cords are human.

“Fareeha?”

She gazes up at him with dark brown eyes and waves shyly. Fareeha. Eight years old like she was when he and Jack and Ana took her to the south of France on a vacation and they spent hours on the beach eating ice cream and running through the surf and posing for photos before the glittering blue of the Mediterranean Sea. “Fareeha,” he whispers again, and kneels. She grins at him, bouncing on her toes. Just like she was. Gabriel reaches out for her, for her stubby little fingers. Her hand is soft and warm, and her pulse jumps faintly beneath her skin. 

It isn’t her.

She’s real and that’s how he knows she’s not. An image he could understand—a hallucination drawn from memory, projected onto his vision by the machines’ wild, mangled code. But she’s too much, too real. More even than he can manage for himself. Gabriel recoils, stumbling back. Fareeha watches him with a child’s frown. What is she? How could she be—

_ “Sombra’s closing in fast and you have to get there before she does.” _

Sombra.

Gabriel whirls and disperses, through the door and out. To the vault. The floor plans are still stored in his electronic brain and he rushes like floodwater, passing over dead guards—his, hers, it doesn’t matter. The vault. Two flights downstairs to the sub-basement, and more corpses pass by him in the dim blue lights, Sombra’s this time for sure. Gabriel flows over the sealed concrete, borne on the crest of his rage.

The vault door is open and he crashes through. 

Sombra is standing there with a data drive resting in her palm but she grips it in a fist when Gabriel appears. With her other hand she motions, calling up a magenta interface at her fingertips. Gabriel comes for her and she vanishes—

—no, she may have hacked his sight but the sound of her breathing, the pressure-waves that condense and rarefy the air, the machines pick them up and Gabriel  _ hears _ her standing right where she was a split-second ago. He roars in fury and his code answers, splitting and streaming around her hack. New eyes bubble out of him, organic and messy, their stalks halfway in-between—myelinated nerve or insulated wire, it’s all the same. And she’s  _ there,  _ turning and running. 

_ GET OUT OF ME! _ he screams. No mouth in the cloud of machines so they vibrate the air and the words thunder out of him, reverberating off the reinforced walls. She manipulates the interface at her fingertips with pinpoint precision and his hearing goes just as a second Sombra appears to his left, and a third to his right. A fourth and fifth.

The nanomachines swamp the room and a dozen arms erupt from the dense black cloud, scraping and clawing at the mirror images.  _ GET OUT OF ME! _ he screams again—feels the vibration in the metal floor and one of them stumbles, clutching her ears. The real one. Gabriel descends. Her fingers fly on the glowing interface and his arms start to dissolve, one, two, three. 

But his code won’t be subdued and for each arm she destroys another two take its place—or more, lunging forward as she sprints down the hall. Not fast enough. She’s only a person. She only has two legs to run on. And what is he?

Gabriel crashes into her, hurling her to the floor. Sound comes back and she yells in pain, surprise, something. The data drive flies out of her hand. He’s on her now, a hundred arms caging her in and pinning her.  _ GET OUT OF ME!  _ he screams, and she flinches, unable to cover her ears anymore with his grip on her, stares up at him with—

Fear.

She’s masking it well but it’s there still and Gabriel is abashed, his many eyes picking out how her pulse pounds in her neck, how fast she breathes. He releases her—his arms dissolving one by one, the many eyes devoured for parts, the black cloud gathering itself. The nanomachines begin to build him again, gradually, and she sits up and pushes herself to her feet as he condenses into being. Human-shaped, once more.

He opens his mouth and his voice is guttural and coarse. “I’m sorry.”

Sombra lets out a long breath, rubbing her eyes. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re supposed to stop me, right?”

“Not like that,” he mutters.

“Listen, I’m sorry too,” she says. “Hacking you like that just to get a headstart was…kinda low.”

“How did you know?” Gabriel asks.

She cocks an eyebrow. “Know what?”

Dark brown eyes, the stubby fingers. “Fareeha.”

“Oh. You have a picture.”

He does, somewhere. Something he keeps even though he hasn’t looked at it in years. Can’t bear to. “How the hell did you find that?”

A smile that’s only a little shaky. “Come on, Gabe. I have my ways.”

Of course she does. Gabriel spots the data drive on the floor and leans over to pick it up.

“So, no offense, but your code’s pretty, ah…messed up,” Sombra says. “You want me to try and fix it? I could probably make you a little more stable.”

Gabriel snorts. “You think I’d let  _ you _ near my code?”

She shrugs. “Hey, only trying to help.”

“Yeah, I…sorry.” He opens and closes his hand. Solid inside the glove, he thinks.

They’re quiet for a moment. Sombra sighs, leaning on the wall. “No, you’re right. I’d probably do something sneaky while I was in there.”

Gabriel smiles at that, then holds out the data drive. “Here, you copy it yet?”

“Yeah, I got it. Thanks.”

“Then you should get out of here,” he tells her. “See you around.”

“See you, Gabe.” She waves and then shimmers as her cloak covers her. 

Gabriel pockets the drive and heads down the hallway. He’s got what Talon wanted. As for the rest…well. He’ll decide just how much they need to know.


End file.
